What Do You Look for in a Kickstarter?

Allow me to repeat the title since that’s my simple thesis: What do you look for in a Kickstarter?

I love the idea of Kickstarter, and I’m glad Kickster works in practice, but it’s a very unique sharing of faith.

The person creating the product is putting faith in those who might be interested. Those who might be interested are putting faith in the creator to deliver on his promises.

Because the quality of what is promised is subjective. A video game might promise a certain kind of gameplay, using words like “fun” and “innovative” to market it, but the end product might not be fun or innovative to everyone.

The end product might not even be good.

So, what do you look for in a Kickstarter?

I’ve got six different Kickstarter game pages opened right now, all of them funded. The games are all different, but the scope to them seems to be almost similar; they are all fairly small and independently developed by fairly small teams.

Every one of these Kickstarter pages is different.

FTL: Faster Than Light

FTL: Faster than Light was, I believe, the first Kickstarter game to make it on Steam, and by all accounts it’s a good game. The creators were only asking for $10,000 to finish up development costs, to pay for music, and to pay for an official business license. That isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but they were near done and needed just a bit more to finish production.

They got plenty more than what they asked for. Why?

Their Kickstarter page is fairly long, filled with videos, pictures, and text. The tone of it isn’t strictly businesses, but the page does take itself seriously. It reads well. It advertises well.

The rewards start off with the price of the game and go up at a fairly steep incline: $10 (the game), $25 (previous rewards and access to a closed beta), $40 (previous rewards and an art book and soundtrack), $80 (previous rewards and an extra copy of the game), $100 (previous rewards, a poster, name in the game), and $500 (previous rewards and the ability to help create a custom event).

There is a “why Kickstarter” paragraph and a small “thank you” section at the end, adding just a bit of personalization to the page.

The page is a good piece of marketing, and it worked better than expected.

Chasm

Let’s look at Chasm next, a Metroidvania game with “authentic pixel art.” The creators of this game asked for $150,000 and made $191,000.

Their page is fairly long, opening with a trailer for the game and then going into a stretch goal image. After that is text, broken up with plenty of images of the game in action.

The page is more businesslike than FTL: Faster than Light’s, but it reads just as well. There are plenty of bullet-point lists, and paragraphs are well varied in length.

Their rewards are fairly extensive: $15 (the game), $25 (early access, an in game item, a soundtrack), $30 (previous rewards and an extra copy), $50 (previous rewards, an art book, another in game item, a mention in the credits), and $100 (previous rewards, a t-shirt, sticker set, a magnet).

Those behind Chasm are asking for a fairly large sum of money, though not too large considering the sheer time it takes for a small group of people to make a video game with many promises. A cynical minded person might view their rewards as bribes over actual “thank you for donating” rewards, since they are fairly elaborate.

The page ends with a team list, featuring a small picture and paragraph of each person working on the game. Chasm’s team has some pedigree behind them, each member having worked on previous games or in the industry for quite some time.

The section acts as a nice resume and helps insure their promise that the game will be made and well made at that.

The end section is a “Risks and Challenges,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

Like the above, the page acts as a nice bout of marketing.

Limit Theory

Limit Theory is the next game I have open, and an interesting example when compared to the rest of these pages. It’s a full 3D space game with some fairly pretty graphics, which sets it above the more pixel arty 2D games, but it’s also being made by one person. Our lone developer asked for $50,000 and wound up with $187,000.

That’s a lot of backing faith in a one-person project, and I hope it’s well placed.

The Kickstarter page opens up with five videos before going into the game proper with text. The body of the text is well organized, offering up sections of relevant information with small paragraphs that are easy to read and flow together well. After that comes a barrage of pictures and a “progress” section.

The rewards for this game grow very gradually: $20 (early copy of the game), $30 (the game, the soundtrack, and a “making of” book), $40 (previous items plus a map with the starting zones), $50 (previous items plus a guide to go with your map), and $60 (previous items and access to the closed beta).

Like Chasm, the rewards are fairly extensive, but unlike Chasm which has a five person team with experience in the medium, Limit Theory is being made by one person. I feel the need to keep stressing that.

His latter items are interesting in that they are guides to help you when you begin the game instead of extra swag style items or a mention in the credits.

Josh has an extensive “about” section on himself that attempts to create faith in those pledging their money, but it doesn’t feature anything in the way of experience. He’s currently studying computer graphics, and he’s been writing code since he was ten, but those things don’t equate to “I’ve made and released a video game before.” This section also features a handful of emoticons and is less businesslike than the above areas.

And like Chasm, Josh ends with a “Risks and Challenges” area, though it’s much longer than that of Chasm’s. At least he’s honest.

The page is well set up, and it reads well, but in terms of marketing, a large project being made by one person is a fun gimmick, but not one I'd expect people to put their monetary faith in.

Nekro

Example four is Nekro, and this proves to be an interesting example as well. Nekro’s Kickstarter page is much, much shorter than the other’s mentioned, and it’s also much sparser. It features a handful of paragraphs, but little in the ways of pictures and no videos. All of the pictures are of concept art and show no actual gameplay. Yet despite this lack of information, the DarkForge team made $158,000, a considerable amount considering their asking price was $100,000.

The page itself is short, to the point, and well written (thankfully that is a common theme!). And yet, it’s hard to get over the lack of videos or pictures. There’s a link to a kind of blog post explaining the combat and the game more fully, but no videos or screenshots.

The rewards are gradual: $15 (the game), $25 (the game, early access, name in the credits), $40 (prior rewards, a free bit of DLC when that’s ready, some in game items), $50 (previous rewards, art book, more in game items), $60 (previous items plus soundtrack).

They seem fair. As an RPG game, in-game items wind up being well received, and so they make sense as rewards. It’s interesting that the soundtrack to this game comes much later when compared to the other examples; likewise, a name in the credits comes much earlier here when compared to the other examples.

Next comes an “About” page for the DarkForge company, and perhaps this is what gave Nekro such extensive backers: DarkForge is made up of people with pedigree. Their simple statement reads, “DarkForge is a group of industry vets hailing from studios such as Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft and more,” and those are names donators are willing to put their faith into.

The page ends with a small “Thank you” section.

As a page selling me a potential product, I don't much care for it. There's little evidence or information, and other than "we worked at AAA studios," there's little to put faith into.

Sealark

Next follows, Sealark, a goofy 2D sprite based game about fishing and adventures. The page is of a moderate length, featuring more pictures than text, and the tone of it is light hearted and silly. There are no videos, though there is a sample song. This two person team asked for $5,000 and wound up with $59,000.

The page isn’t quite as well written as the above, but it still reads well. The tone of it is as pink and colorful as the images presented within, making it an amusing read.

The rewards for Sealark are also quite gradual: $10 (the game), $15 (the game and soundtrack), $20 (previous items and a user manual), $40 (limited physical copies of the previous items), and $50 (previous items and a mention in the game’s credits).

Nothing out of the ordinary when compared to the above. Like Chasm, the soundtrack comes early and a mention in the credits comes much later.

This two man team has two paragraphs devoted to each of them, but they have little pedigree other than a Tumblr page and a website.

The page ends with some stretch goals and a “Thank you” sprite image.

Sealark’s page is much smaller in size and scope, the two man team has less pedigree behind them, and the page itself isn’t as complicated or thorough as some of the above examples. Yet, they got more than funded for their game.

Artizens

Our final example is Artizens, a kind of hack and slash RPG game that namedrops being similar to Shadow of the Colossus and boasting the ability to draw your own items. They asked for $30,000 and made $52,000.

The page opens up with a gameplay video, and then follows up with paragraphs and pictures. Somewhere in the middle there’s a soundtrack section with examples of eight tracks. The tone is businesslike, though there’s much less writing to this Kickstarter page than that of FTL: Faster than Light or Limit Theory.

Like FTL: Faster than Light, the donation rewards spike quickly: $15 (the game), $25 (the game and soundtrack), $40 (three copies of the game and a soundtrack), $60 (previous rewards plus free DLC when available), and $100 (above rewards and some custom in-game items).

Those making Artizens have no information about their company or themselves on their Kickstarter page, though they do end with a “”Risks and Challenges” section, mostly talking about the cost of making games.

This page holds a much more aggressive style of “here’s proof that we can do this” than the others. The gameplay video coupled with eight different songs to preview really show that these guys mean business. Of all the pages, this is the one I respect the most.

So we have six different games on six different Kickstarters. The one unifying thing between them is they were all funded.

But why? What do you look for in a Kickstarter?

Of all the games on the list, I’d say FTL: Faster than Light is the only one that offers a truly different experience. All of the others fall into genres of games we’ve seen many times before.

But they all got funded.

The six games boast different rewards, though there are similar veins running through them all. The first tier is always the game itself, and many have the soundtrack as an option. A few are offering artbooks, and a few are offering in game items such as armor or non combat pets.

But where and when these rewards show up is vastly different between them.

The tone and writing style differ between these six Kickstarter pages, as does the amount of information given.

But that didn’t seem to matter either.

What do you look for in a Kickstarter? What entices you to donate? What prompts your level of faith in a project that may not see the light of day for months or even a year?

Is it the tone? The amount of information? The length of the page? The amount of pictures/videos? The rewards? The pedigree or general information about those working on the project?

Because those all differed and these games got funded, some astronomically so.

A Kickstarter page is a kind of aggressive marketing, “here is what you’ll get, but you need to pay for it before it’s done.” That’s quite the asking price. Of these six pages, I’d say only half of them are really effective in their marketing practices, offering nice examples of what the final product aught to be.

But that really didn’t seem to matter in the end: even the sparser pages got funded.

The internet is an odd place, and depending on where you go, it seems to mostly comprise of cynics and mean-spirited people. But Kickstarter is different. Kickstarter is a promotion of art and business transactions, a promotion of hope and goodwill between people who have never met. It the one that doesn't belong when put together next to Reddit or Cracked or 4chan or any of the thousands of pornographic websites.

Yet it works, and quite well.

I love the idea of Kickstarter, and I’m glad Kickster works in practice, but where does the Internet, cynical and all, find such faith in products that are still in preplanning?